


kitchen counter blues

by feather_cadence



Category: Lego Ninjago
Genre: M/M, Mutual Pining, straight up antics, these 6 r stupid as fuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 19:59:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19184596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feather_cadence/pseuds/feather_cadence
Summary: Kai is in love with Jay. Cole is in love with Zane. This is the way it's been for years, and no one has made a move to change it. Kai and Cole ponder this. Jay and Zane have a conversation that's been a long time coming. Nya and Lloyd watch the chaos unfold.





	kitchen counter blues

**Author's Note:**

> takes place during wu's teas. this is pretty old so sorry for any inaccuracies. enjoy!

“I’m such a dumbass.” Cole sighs, dropping his head into his hands melodramatically, in the way only a lovestruck kid can.

Kai laughs from the other side of the room, by the sink. He’s doing the dishes in the low yellow light from the streetlamp outside the window, and glances over his shoulder at the almost comically morose figure at the table half hidden in shadow across the room. “What is it you did this time?”

Cole groans and drags his hands down his face as he remembers the earlier interaction that earned him dumbass status. “I was gonna tell him.” he says, slightly muffled by the hands still in front of his face. “We were the last two in the store for a bit - except for you back here, i guess - and I had planned out how I was gonna say it and everything, but I just didn’t. I don’t know what’s wrong with me! I just let him go and said see you at home! God.”

Kai laughed over the soft clinking of dishes in the sink. He was the only one of them that actually enjoyed doing all the odd chores and jobs, for some reason. Something about keeping moving. Kai didn’t like staying still much.

“Look dude, you’ve been trying the dropping hints method for what, like two years? Zane hasn’t picked up on it. You gotta say it straight out or nothing’s gonna happen.”

“You’re one to talk.” Cole said, looking out towards the rest of the store, still lit but empty of people. It was always a little creepy this time of day, he thought.

Kai laughed again, shrugging as he looked up from the plate he was scrubbing. “You got me there.”

There’s a silence, filled by the gentle whirring of the fan overhead and far distant sound of car horns closer to the center of Ninjago City. Cole knows that Kai is right about this. He’s been in love with Zane from a distance for longer than he’d like to admit, but something has always gotten in the way. Hell, the first time Cole realized he was in love with his teammate was only weeks before Zane literally died. Talk about bad timing.

And now, everything was at peace, and Ninjago wasn’t in danger, and Cole wasn’t, you know, a fucking ghost, and he was still too scared to tell Zane he loved him.

“Maybe it just ain’t meant to work out.” Cole said, working all but a slight hint of tired resignation out of his voice. “Team relationships and all that.”

Kai stacked the last cup and turned to face Cole, leaning back on the counter. “I don’t know about that. I mean, Nya and Jay, right? They’ve like, kinda had a thing before.”

“Yeah, a thing that almost permanently broke our team apart when Jay and I got into a fight about it.”

“Oh. Yeah, that was pretty dumb, wasn’t it?”

“Tell me about it. I barely even remember what even started it now. Some bullshit, probably.”

“You’re distracting from the situation at hand, loverboy.” Kai said, giving Cole the ever-classic ‘Kai is about to give some bad advice’ look. “You know, your romantic failings?”

Cole’s only response was yet another groan. “Like I said. Not one to talk. I’ll tell Zane how I feel about him when you tell Jay.”

“Uh-uh. Different situation, dude. Zane’s just oblivious. Jay’s in love with my sister. Still. Somehow.” He chuckled, as if to himself. “I’m pretty sure she’s told him directly that she’s gay, and he’s still somehow doing this dumb bullshit.”

“Maybe he wouldn’t if you told him how you felt.” Cole replied, singsong. Kai just shrugged.

“Okay, so maybe it’s not that different a situation.”

An ambulance passes a few blocks down, siren splitting the quiet night, and both pause to listen. Both instinctively figuring out where it is it’s going, just in case someone needs their help. Hero habits don’t go well with city life, Cole thinks to himself. They just don’t.

“Maybe tomorrow.” he says softly, as if to himself.

“Yeah.” Kai agrees, silhouetted in the city’s yellow glow and looking strangely sad. “Maybe tomorrow.”

The silence in the kitchen hangs heavy, as if agreeing.

Maybe tomorrow.

 

……..

 

**jay: zane zane zane you awake?  
jay: cause uh   
jay: RED 🚨 FUCKING 🚨 ALERT 🚨  
zane: Is everything alright? Is the city under attack?  
jay: no but theres a RED ALERT 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨  
jay: meet me on the deck?  
zane: I’ll be up in one moment.**

“Perhaps next time preface your red alerts with a disclaimer that there’s not actually a dangerous situation?” Zane offered as he climbed the stairs to the deck of the Bounty. “Pixal woke me up in a panic.”

Jay paused in his circuit of nervous pacing, the odd expression on his face backlit by the huge map of Ninjago behind him. The soft blue glow was the only light in the cabin, making it look odd and surreal, as if the room was haunted. Zane shivered slightly at the thought. “Oh. Sorry for waking you up, dude. I kinda thought you didn’t sleep?”

Zane shrugged. “It’s sort of an old habit, I suppose.” He carefully moved a few fragile looking contraptions and various papers aside and sat on the small segment of counter next to the console. “What is your red alert situation?”

Jay paused, looked near frantically at the door to the cabin, and started pacing again. “Okay, this is gonna sound, like. So stupid. But I can't go to Cole, cause he'd probably laugh at me, Nya and Kai are out of the question, and I have literally no idea where Lloyd is. Like he'd be any help anyways. He's what, twelve?”

“He's fifteen, but the point stands.” Zane corrected. “And you’re rambling.”

“Oh.” said Jay again, like he was struggling and failing to say more. “I guess I am.” He paused, stopping his nervous circuit in the same place as before, and again looking at Zane. Zane had never been great at reading emotions, and the one on Jay’s face escaped him - part desperation, part excitement, part something else, new and unrecognizable.

“Okay.” he said, repeating himself. He was talking fast now, letting momentum stand in for bravery. “Okay, you know how I've been in love with Nya for like, five years? Like, since I first ever met her and all that and the whole time I've been trying to get with her and it caused all that drama with Cole, and that whole thing with Nadhakan I guess, and I've been this stupid pining asshole the whole time?”

Zane nodded, half amused and half worried at his friend's frantic monologue. Jay took the nod as a cue and launched off again, barely stopping to breathe.

“Cause I was just thinking about it and how stupid I've been especially with the whole Cole thing cause I don't think he was ever really into her but that's beside the point cause I was thinking and I don't know but I think it's been Kai I'm in love with this whole time which is so stupid right? Like so stupid cause I only realized it just now.”

He stopped, fidgeting with his fingers and trying to catch his breath. Half the tension in his shoulders had dissipated with the final confession in his little speech, but he was half more tense somehow, like he was worried Zane would walk out and never talk to him again. Zane couldn't understand why he would be so worried, given that Jay was the last one on the team to realize he wasn't straight, but Jay had always been the nervous one. 

Zane smiled softly and pulled his legs under him on the counter, sitting cross legged. “Does this mean you're done with your five year pining?”

“Uh, yeah? Yeah, definitely yeah.” He paused, and something in the cabin beeped quietly at them. With a long-suffering sigh, Jay plopped himself on the opposite counter, diagonal from Zane. “I think thats a good thing. Especially for Nya. I was annoying as hell.”

Zane laughed at that. “She’ll appreciate the irony of the situation, at least.”

Jay laughed too, his nervous little jumpy laugh that was only half real. He still looked tense, but not nearly as much as when Zane had first arrived in the low light of the cabin. 

The beeping continued, not persistent enough that either of them payed it any attention. Jay worried at a loose string on his shorts absentmindedly, blinking slowly as if thinking.

“Do you think I should tell him?” Jay asked, his near whisper barely breaking the fuzzy silence. He seemed nervous again.

Zane almost laughed. Kai had been harboring a crush on Jay for almost as long as Jay had been in love with Nya. At any occasion that Jay was away for any length of time, Kai would crash next to Cole and Zane and Nya if she was around and mumble about how in love he was with Jay while they watched shitty reality tv. It was a tried and true tradition for the four of them. Cole affectionately called it Kai’s Gay Hour.

“I think so. I don't see how it could hurt.”

“Yeah. Good idea. Well, maybe good idea. I dunno. What if it does hurt? What if I end up breaking up the team again?”

Zane sighed. “Jay, I'm going to be brutally honest for a moment, if you don't mind.” Jay didn't object in the tiny pause Zane left, so he continued. “The reason the team broke up last time, however long ago that was, wasn't because of your fight with Cole. It was because I died, and we didn't know how to handle that.” The whole sentence sounded so odd to him as it hung in the still air - the matter of fact statement of his own death, the inclusive we despite the fact he wasn't there in the time he was referencing. He let the discrepancies go and looked across at Jay. “I'm the one who should be blamed for that event. And you should definitely tell Kai you love him. I have a feeling it'll work out.”

Jay looked slightly surprised, but whether it was at the rather long speech from his usually quiet teammate, or at the persistent truth it revealed he didn't say, and Zane couldn't tell.  
But he looked a little more resolved, Zane though, a little more brave.

He nodded. “Okay. I'm not gonna do it like, tonight or anything, and probably not tomorrow but yeah. Okay.” He gave Zane a funny half smile. “Guess I should trust the guy with the sixth sense.”

Zane smiled. “Guess so.”

……………..

The Bounty had been in a frantic panic like this only three times before - when a leviathan had pulled it halfway into the sea, when it had floated above the near start of the next Serpentine war, and when the sky had opened up and the wind had tried to smash them into the ground.

The difference was that this time, Nya wasn't in the cabin, trying to prevent the ship from breaking apart. This time, she was in the living room, watching the panic around her, and laughing her head off.

It had taken three weeks, and all the years behind that, for Kai to finally ask Jay out, and another week for Cole to work up the courage to do the same for Zane. Now, only a couple hours before the double date five years in the making, all four were panicked - even the usually level headed Zane.

And for Nya and Lloyd, perched on the couch and watching the chaos unfold around them, it was just about the funniest thing in the world.

“Tell me I wasn't this bad before my first date with Skylor.” Nya said between giggles as she watched Kai skitter into the kitchen, mumbling to himself as he counted something out on his fingers. Lloyd barked a laugh and shook his head.

“Nowhere near it. You got all weird and logical but-” he paused as Cole walked in, knelt and fished under the couch for something, retrieved a single fingerless glove, and retreated. “Yeah, nothing like this.”

“Thank god.” she said. There was a single moment of peace, than somewhere a door slammed. “These guys have saved the world how many times now? And this is how they get for a date?”

“Okay, credit where credit is due, I think most of the time most of the world saving was from us two.” Nya nodded in agreement. “There was the time it was my dad, and the time it was Zane, but other than that it's split pretty even between you and me.”

“Jeez, I never even thought about that, but you're pretty much right.” 

Jay walked in to interrupt, looking hapless and holding a scarf in each hand. One orange and yellow, one with a feathery pattern of blue and purple. His expression mostly asked the question for him.

“Blue looks too matchy.” Nya said, half gesturing to the rest of his outfit (all shades of blue, as usual.) “Try the orange.”

“Are you sure?” Jay asked, looking skeptically at the orange scarf like it was about to come alive and bite him. “What if-”

Nya didn't let him finish. “Kai’ll like the orange.” she said, matter of fact.

Jays expression changed so quickly, Nya blinked and missed the shift - but now he looked at the scarf as if it were made of gold.

He offered a hurried thanks as he rushed from the room, looping the scarf around his neck easily as he did. Nya rolled her eyes, and Lloyd laughed again.

“You know, he did this to us every time he went on a date with you.” he explained. Nya just rolled her eyes again.

“Most of those weren't dates.” She said. “I don't know what they are, but they were not dates.”

“Yeah, I think I'll trust you over Jay on that one.”

Zane half dashed out of a hallway, nearly crashed into Kai, and zipped back to the hall he came from. Kai, looking lost, wandered over to the couch.

“Have you guys seen my shoes, the ones with the little fucking stripes on ‘em?” he asked, looking around the living room. Nya stopped herself from laughing. Her brother’s use of swear words in perfectly ordinary scenarios was always hilarious to her, but this was not the time.

Lloyd looked slightly sheepish. “Oh, uh, I think they're in my closet?”

“Why the fuck are they in your closet?”

“I needed to go into the city and none of the shoes I had matched my outfit, so I took yours. I was gonna put em back.” Lloyd explained.

Kai gave a pointed, disappointed older brother glare that Nya was well familiar with. “Next time you take my clothes without asking, I'm gonna kick you in the shins, green ninja or not.”

Lloyd shrugged with a little half smile, not looking particularly apologetic. Nya laughed as he walked out of the room. 

“He's told me that seven times in the past week, and my shins are still fine.” Lloyd said.   
“Look, it's not my fault. And Kai doesn't wear half the clothes in his closet anyways.”

“I've been stealing his clothes since I was 12, and most of the time he doesn't even notice.” Nya explained. “It's just what siblings do.”

Lloyd nodded sagely. Nya was glad that he was starting to think of himself as their sibling, after Nya and Kai spent months making sure the kid knew they were here for him after Garmadon’s death.

Little victories, she thought absently. 

Cole was back suddenly, holding his phone limply at his side and looking defeated in the living room doorway . Nya turned in his direction, crossing her legs under her. 

“So far we’ve helped Kai and Jay, and now we're about to help Cole.” she said, ticking off the team members on her fingers. “Zane’s the only one who hasn't come to us for help. Maybe once he does they'll realize we're the backbone of this team?”

Cole gave a sarcastic little ha, ha laugh. 

“All I want is for them to bring us home some dinner.” Lloyd said, looking serious for his simple request.

Cole threw up his hands. “That's the problem!” he said, in a stage whisper. “I'm the one picking where we're going, and I have no idea!”

“What about Skylor’s?” Nya suggested immediately.  
Cole just looked at her. “Nya. It’s very sweet that you're trying to give your girlfriend our business to support her restaurant. But. The last time all of us were at Chen’s was not the greatest experience.”

“Oh yeah. To be fair, I wasn't there, so I didn't really remember.”

“I was.” said Lloyd empathetically. “I'm with Cole, not the best first date spot for them.”

Nya whacked Lloyd on the arm. “What do you know about first date spots, you big dork? You've never been on a date.”

“Are you sure about that?” he said, sounding absolutely serious. 

“Yep. I know if you had you wouldn't be able to shut up about it.”

“Hey!”

“Uh, problem at hand, guys?” Cole said, waving his phone in the air for emphasis. “We are leaving in half an hour and I don't know where we're going!”

“You didn't make reservations anywhere?” Nya asked.

“No! I'm too much of a dumbass for that!”

“Okay, fair.” she said with a little laugh. “How about the burger place that's like, a block from the square?”

“Nope. It's always packed on friday nights.”

“The sushi place by the pier?”

“Reservation only.”

“That sit down place with the crazy desserts?”

Cole paused, thinking. “I don't think I've been there but I like the sound of crazy desserts.”

“It's a little bit out of the way cause it's on the other side of town, but. We do have a flying boat.” 

Cole nodded, looking relieved. “Nya, I think you just literally saved my life. I think I probably owe you a life debt now.”

Lloyd snapped to attention suddenly. “Bring us back leftovers and the debt is paid.” 

Lloyd barely dodged out of the way as Nya whacked at his arm again. “What's this us?” she said, grinning. “You didn't even help!” 

“I was moral support!” he said, mock annoyment in his voice as he tried to hit Nya back. She dodged and laughed. “And I'm the leader of this team.”

“Nope! That doesn't matter here! I’m the older one.”

Lloyd laughed again. Frantic panic or not, the fact that the two of them were laughing this much was a welcome change.

“Look, if it makes you feel better, I’ll bring back leftovers anyways.” Cole said, before the situation devolved into further violence. “And again, thank you for the help.” he added as he turned and walked out of the room.”

“As long as you don't get sweet potato fries!” Lloyd yelled after him. “They're gross!”

Cole didn't respond. Nya laughed. Lloyd turned to her with an odd grin. 

“Hey, maybe you should be the master in training instead of me.” he said, sounding like he was only half joking. “You're much better at advice and being wise.”

“Yeah, but I look awful in green.” she replied. “I’ll stick with this, thanks.”

“Fair enough.” Lloyd said. 

Zane walked into the living room, somehow walking more robotically than usual, and sat on the edge of an armchair on the other side of the room. 

“Is it your turn to ask for advice?” Nya asked. Zane shook his head, fingers tapping rhythmically on the arm of the chair.

“No,” he said, “not this time. I'm simply waiting for the rest of them to finish getting ready.”

“And that's our cue to leave.” Lloyd said, rising and stretching. He shot a grin at Nya. “I'll drive.”

“No, you will not. You are terrible at flying this boat. We'd crash into a skyscraper.”

“What! No.”

“I’ll fly. Zane, tell the other guys we’ll be there in 10.”

Zane nodded as Nya stood and lead the way to the bridge. Lloyd tagged behind, barely avoiding Jay as he shot out of the hallway they were entering. 

“Ten minutes?!” he said, frantically looking at Zane, who nodded again. He looked back at Lloyd and Nya as Lloyd gave him a thumbs up. “That's not enough time!!”

He careened out of the room again, fixing his scarf. Cole shouted something that Nya didn't hear, likely due to Jay crashing into him. She laughed as she pushed open the door to the bridge, into the self contained web of lights and sounds that was simultaneously her favorite and least favorite part of the ship.

“This is nice.” Lloyd said, gesturing over his shoulder. Nya saw a flash of red at the end of the hallway as her brother sped past. “Chaotic as hell, but nice.”

Nya knows what he means. There's no imminent danger from serpentine or ghosts or extra-planar deities. There's no tragedy looming on the horizon. There's just the six of them. If she were to look through the bridge door, to the living room beyond, she'd see the four of them talking and laughing, nervous but grinning from ear to ear, ecstatic and excited. 

And it's nice.

She nods as she moves to the steering wheel, watching the city fall away as they glide over it. There's a creak behind her as Lloyd sits in one of the chairs near another complex console, and further squeaking sounds as he spins slowly. 

“Yeah.” she says, just loud enough to be heard. “It’s nice.”

The living room down the hall erupts with laughter. The city lights come on slowly as the sun sets. 

And nice is all it has to be.

………………

Three hours later, the Bounty picks up its four passengers on an unassuming street corner, in front of an unassuming restaurant. Cole brought back sweet potato fries. They watch a shitty romcom, all crowded on the same couch.

Between the six of them, not one can stop smiling for the rest of the night.


End file.
